This project is devoted to the study of solid-liquid interfaces in pure Fe and Fe-C alloys using molecular simulation. It consists of three parts: first, we use the coexisting phases approach to calculate melting phase diagrams of several recent Fe-C interaction potentials, such as Embedded Atom Method (EAM) potential of Lau et al., EAM potential of Hepburn and Ackland, and Analytic Bond Order (ABOP) potential of Henriksson and Nordlund. Melting of both bcc (ferrite) and fcc (austenite) crystal structures is investigated with C concentrations up to 5 wt%. The results are compared with the experimental data and suggest that the potential of Hepburn and Ackland is the most accurate in reproducing the melting phase diagram of the ferrite but the austenite cannot be stabilised at any C concentration for this potential.
The potential of Lau et al. yields the best qualitative agreement with the real phase diagram in that the ferrite-liquid coexistence at low C concentrations is replaced by the austenite-liquid coexistence at higher C concentrations. However, the crossover C concentration is much larger and the ferrite melting temperature is much higher than in the real Fe-C alloy. The ABOP potential of Henriksson and Nordlund correctly predicts the relative stability of ferrite and austenite at melting, but significantly underestimates the solubility of C in the solid phases.
Second, we develop a new direct method for calculating the solid-liquid interfacial free energy using deformation of the solid-liquid coexistence system.
The deformation is designed to change the area of the interface, while preserving the volume of the system and crystal structure of the solid phase. The interfacial free energy is calculated as the deformation work divided by the change of the interfacial area. The method is applied to the bcc solid-liquid interface of pure Fe described by the Hepburn and Ackland potential. The obtained results are somewhat different from those calculated by the established methods so further development and analysis are required.
Third, we investigate the dependence on C concentration of the bcc solid-liquid interfacial free energy of Fe-C alloy described by the Hepburn and Ackland potential. We use the method proposed by Frolov and Mishin which is analogous to the Gibbs-Duhem integration along the solid-liquid coexistence line. The calculations are performed for three different crystal orientations (100), (110) and (111), allowing us to determine the anisotropy of the interfacial free energy and its dependence on C concentration along the coexistence line. Although the precision is somewhat limited by the high computational cost of such calculations.